A previously undisclosed Pentagon report reveals that seven US service members may have contracted COVID-19 as early as October 2019 while attending the World Military Games in Wuhan, China – months before the officially recognized start of the pandemic.
The news has caused a scandal in Washington, D.C. as former President Joe Biden’s administration failed to release the report to the public, despite a law requiring them to do so two years ago.
The December 2022 report, obtained by The Washington Free Beacon, indicates these U.S. military personnel experienced COVID-19-like symptoms between October 18, 2019, and January 21, 2020, after returning from China. All seven service members recovered within six days.
Despite the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act requiring its public release by summer 2022, the Biden administration defied the law.
The report was only made public in late March 2025 when it was uploaded to a Department of Defense website by the Trump administration.
“Taxpayers deserve to know the truth about COVID-19 origins, but the Biden administration concealed this information from the American people for years,” Senator Joni Ernst told The Washington Free Beacon. “This report should have been made public immediately and not restricted to Washington insiders.”
The newly released report directly contradicts previous statements by Biden administration officials.
Former Defense Department spokesman John Kirby told The Washington Post in June 2021 that the military had “no knowledge” of any COVID-19 infections among troops participating in those games.
While it’s possible the symptoms may have been caused by other respiratory illnesses, the timing and location are significant to ongoing investigations into the pandemic’s origins. The American military athletes traveled to and from Wuhan via Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, with Washington state became one of the earliest COVID-19 hotspots in the country.
Athletes from other countries, including Germany, France, Italy, and Luxembourg, also reported coming down with COVID-19-like symptoms during their stay in Wuhan.
The report’s delayed release has fueled criticism of the Biden administration and accusations of a cover-up. Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University professor of chemical biology, called it “an outrage” that the Biden administration withheld the information.
“This new information strengthens US and allied intelligence data indicating that COVID-19 was circulating in Wuhan in October-November 2019,” Ebright told The Free Beacon.
The potential early infections intensify criticisms about the Biden administration’s stance on COVID-19’s origins. Several federal agencies, including the CIA and FBI, have concluded the pandemic most likely originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located near where the military games were held.
Congressional Republicans have previously concluded that the 2019 Wuhan World Military Games served as “one of the earliest super spreader events” of the pandemic, after House Foreign Affairs Republicans issued findings on the matter in August 2021.
The Defense Department placed the report in an obscure section of its website dedicated to “quality-of-life” issues for military service members, between two separate reports on military spouses obtaining occupational licenses – a placement critics suggest was designed to minimize attention to the scandal.